The NWS Storm Prediction Center has issued a
* Tornado Watch for portions of
Northeast Colorado
Western Nebraska Panhandle
Southeast Wyoming
* Effective this Monday afternoon and evening from 110 PM until
800 PM MDT.
...THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION...
* Primary threats include...
Several tornadoes and a few intense tornadoes likely
Widespread large hail expected with scattered very large hail
events to 4 inches in diameter likely
Isolated significant damaging wind gusts to 75 mph possible
SUMMARY...Isolated intense supercell thunderstorms are expected to
develop across the watch area this afternoon. Giant hail and strong
tornadoes will be possible in the most intense storms.

I have not seen wording like this for Colorado in a long time, if ever…”Giant hail and strong tornadoes…”, and “scattered very large hail events up to 4 inches likely“. Wow!

I drove Highway 85 north from Aurora. By the time I was in Brighton they were saying baseball hail had fallen in Pierce from the southern storm. The most southern cell wasn’t big but did look like it had fantastic storm structure. Unfortunately I was too far north to see the structure clearly. I was tempted to drive SW towards Loveland and check it out, but seeing the supercell in front of me kept me on it!

Photo viewing is recommended in higher resolution, just click on the photos.

The barber pole structure on this supercell was very tempting to spot from a better location, but I wanted to stay on the stronger storm!

The first tornado warning (radar indicated) appeared while I was east of Ault on the supercell I was on. There definitely was a defined wall cloud and everything looked “right” with the storm, it was just a matter of time.

Lowering wall cloud on the southern side of the supercell. It was tornado warned at this time just north of Briggsdale.

You can see the rotating wall cloud and funnel .

This is taken outside of Grover looking northwest, the tornado was down near Hereford.

The tornado was on the ground for 16 minutes and did some structural damage (one road was closed due to debris/powerlines in the road). It was rated EF-2 with 111-135 mph winds.

Tornado showing mesocyclone.

The ropeout phase was pretty amazing, look how long and needle thin the tornado vortex was!

I stopped just east of Hereford as the hail looked pretty amazing laying everywhere. Hail didn’t pile up on the ground like some storms, but it was everywhere and the smallest size was around quarter sized! Then there were stones up to softball size laying around! I am fascinated by large hail and spent some time just checking out these amazing ice crystals!

Example of how the hail was lying around everywhere! Not covering the ground, but big stones!

On radar the storm still had an intense velocity couplet after the tornado!

Driving towards Bushnell out of Pine Bluffs I saw another tornado touchdown but only for a minute. As I headed east of Bushnell, I saw a tornado NE of town; but there were no easy spots to pull off so I just watched it as I drove. When I finally found a pull-out from the road, a train went by blocking my view for about 5 minutes. After the train, I caught the rope out. Looking back to the NW, I saw another tornado but was never able to get a good picture of it!

Rope out NE of Bushnell, NE.

I ended up calling it a day near Chimney Rock as I watched the amazing mothership sail off into the distance!

For the forth day in row the atmosphere was primed for severe storms over eastern Colorado. I got an early start and did the standard thing it seems…catch the first storm that popped up on the Palmer Divide. That was a storm that went just north of Elizabeth following the same patterns as many previous days. This storm would prove to be the storm of the day, tornado warned, and surrounded by chasers all the way into Kansas.

SW of Bennett as this storm was getting organized

The temps were in the low 60s and the clouds were pretty high based. Looking at the surface map further out on the plains was 75/55 and in some places 80/55, so I opted to split the difference between Last Chance and Brush to hit whatever storms seems to be using the more unstable air.

The southern storm just didn’t look good to me, and it was forming in the cooler air, so I opted to head to the cell popping up SW of Fort Morgan. As I arrived it was tornado warned, of course about 10 minutes after the southern storm was also TVS warned. The Fort Morgan storm was very high based and appeared to line out rather quickly. I left it and tried to catch up with the southern storm that was along I-70 approaching Seibert.

Tornado Warned storm over Fort Morgan. Trained Spotters saw a funnel.

The southern cell appeared to be hitting the cap and was dissipating quickly, and the convection looked like mush which I’ve never had much luck with approaching Kansas (I like to see rock-hard popcorn type convection in the towers). I still had a ways to catch up to it so I opted to head for the new storm that was forming SE of Limon.

This storm was heading east of Limon when the larger cell started to loose its convection.

I headed south out of Cope and nearing Seibert I pulled over to check out some of the structure of the approaching storm. The radar showed this complex as a line of storms so I knew it probably wasn’t going to do anything severe (perhaps hail or wind), so I just decided to absorb the structure as it approached.

Looking SW from near Cope, Colorado.

This storm was lined out making an Arcus roll cloud

Some nice striations in the clouds

Just north of Seibert I stopped to check out this arcus roll cloud which was really neat. These clouds are similar to shelf clouds but are detached from the cloud base.

Arcus Roll Cloud

Heading back home I got to see some neat rainbows and dying cell structure while passing the Limon wind farm, which I always love to drive past/through. All-in-all a fun chase day!

Today was the third day in a row that the Colorado Front Range had a tornado watch issued. I left a little late due to a work meeting (who schedules meetings in the afternoons during storm season, how rude! 🙂 ) and headed up to follow the second cell that was tornado warned near Parker. Caught some great storm structure and had a fun time with this storm as it went in and out of tornado warned status. Once again, more Palmer Divide magic!

Double tail clouds!

Cell east of Byers as it got going again. Awesome watching the tail clouds form and pass overhead!

Tornado warned at this time.

This was cool as the outflow was getting sucked up into the cloud.

On the way home I caught the cells that were forming off of the Rampart Range west of Castle Rock to get some lightning shots. Unfortunately it was raining anywhere near the storm, so I shot some distant photos near Castlewood Canyon, still caught some great lightning. It produces much better photos closer to the strikes, however; but there are still months of storms to catch great lightning shots.

This appears to be a small shear funnel on the right side of this storm looking north from Castle Rock

Lightning over the Pinery

Lightning over the Pinery

Lightning over the Pinery

Lightning over the Pinery

Lightning over the Pinery

Been a fun June chasing so far! Look forward to more days this spring!

Today had another round of severe weather for the Colorado Front Range including Tornadic Supercells. I left work a bit late today due to a pending deadline so I was behind the 8-ball all day, but still was able to see some really neat storm structure.

Storms had already gone severe warned by the time I left work so I had a good idea which one to jump on. I was targeting the storm just west of Limon as I was heading east on I-70 and then the cell near Leader was just too impressive and I had to check it out. This is common with me when chasing as my favorite part is the storm structure and not strictly tornadoes which is the focus for many chasers.

Here is the supercell as I was passing it on the interstate as it was near Leader

Awesome storm structure as this cell was tornado warned.

As I approached this storm is was obvious it was getting smaller, both on radar and visibly to my eye. It didn’t matter though, the inflow band and what I could see of the updraft were spectacular! Within 30 minutes this storm went from Tornado warned to non-existent!

Awesome structure just east of Byers, however the storm is dying

Watching this supercell dwindle into nothing in less than 30 minutes!

So back onto my originally targeted strom. I made a few tactical mistakes that cost some time today–miss my chase partner Adam who was excellent at it–and ended up taking a few roads I have not done before. Due to the amount of rain the dirt roads were mud and somewhat slick so it was slow going. Sometime the shortest route is not the best route! 🙂 Meanwhile this supercell was putting down beautiful tornadoes with amazing structure. Here is what it looked like from the back (north) side (it was moving south) which is a typical view as you are approaching a storm from this perspective!

Getting back onto my primary target, it has been producing tornadoes by this time.

But perseverance pays off! I finally got on this storm a little before sunset. It had already stopped producing tornadoes although I thought there was one more left in it…but it didn’t have quite enough energy even though the mesocyclone was spinning like a top! The structure was jaw dropping, with a visibly rotating barberpole updraft. And there were no other chasers in this location when I arrived (a treat from days like yesterday where there were 100’s of chasers converged in the same area). Ended up being 4 chaser teams in my area, and we all got an amazing display from mother nature!!!

Finally caught up with this supercell. Amazing structure near Kutch.

Lucky daytime lightning caught.

As the sun started to set, the energy dwindled and the inflow started to fizzle out. The tail cloud that formed made me thing it was going to produce another tornado in front of me, but it was just a little too late for that to happen.

Nice helix barberpole inflow just before its death.

Amazing, colorful sunset

Nice display of Mammatus Clouds at sunset

On the way home Denver had a large severe warned cell stalled over it. On the radio they were talking about the mass amounts of hail and continuous lightning. The storm stretched the entire metro area so I jumped up to a spot I’ve been wanting to photograph lightning from near Parker and took a few shots. The lightning was incredible but it was 98% cloud-cloud and only small spikes were coming out of the cloud in this one location. Great to watch for about 20 minutes before I ended up heading home.

All-in-all, an amazing chase day, the structure of the Kutch supercell is one I will never forget!

Today the National Weather Service issued an enhanced risk of severe storms for Central and Northern Colorado, likely having Colorado Supercells on the menu! My original thought was to wait near Prospect Valley and either hit the storms coming off of the Palmer Divide, or head into Northeast Colorado if the cells fired there. A tried and tested strategy, and it worked once again today.

Larkspur supercell as seen north of Kiowa.

Larkspur supercell as it went through Castle Rock and Franktown.

I was in Bennett at about 2:30pm when the first cell fired up. Because I was nowhere near home, the cell was over Larkspur put down quarter sized hail. But this storm was the only play thus far in a good atmospheric environment and given the cap was strong I decided to head south towards Elizabeth and cut off this slow moving storm. I ended up finding a nice location a couple miles south of Elizabeth and set up the camera for a time lapse. The Larkspur storm slowly moved NE but it wasn’t tightening up and was obvious that it probably would only produce hail. It ended up completely vanishing within about 30 minutes near Kiowa.

Elizabeth supercell showing some interesting formations

Second supercell as it entered Elizabeth.

Meanwhile, the cells behind this supercell merged and took a right turn. This was an amazing looking cell and I watched it from Elizabeth, then Kiowa. But like its earlier friend it couldn’t withstand the cap and environment east of Kiowa and quickly died. The good news is that for my second chase of the season I was home by 9pm, a rare occasion on chase day!

Kiowa supercell as seen east of town.

Kiowa supercell showing some interesting scud formations

Aurora supercell as seen from Hwy 86 near Elizabeth as I was heading home.

Castle Rock clouds as seen from Hwy 86 near Elizabeth as I was heading home.

June 5, 2014: It’s been a somewhat slow chase season thus far, which by most people’s opinion is a great thing. Despite that, early June always has good storms to look forward to here in the Front Range of Colorado. The Storm Prediction Center issued a slight risk and a Severe Thunderstorm Watch over the Front Range. Adam Boggs once again was able to meet up and we decided to chase. The only storm that looked interesting was coming out of SE Aurora and Adam and I started near Bennett on this storm.

The storm was initially heading SE but soon took on a more southern route and followed I-70 on its western side and then went south and east of Limon. We chased through Arapahoe and into Elbert counties and ended up getting in front of the storm near Hwy 24.

Just as we got in front (South) of the storm near Simla

Continuing south we zig-zagged in front of this storm staying just minutes outside of the initial hail and right in the gust front.

Driving in the gust front we were in many dust situations like this that crossed the road in front of us!

Out in front we saw several “gustnados”, or dust devils created by the gust front of the storm; plus there were several times that we were driving in the dust storm, which was moving briskly at about 40-45 mph. There were some interesting cloud formations but given we were so close to the core of the storm it was hard to view the more global structure of the storm.

We were chased by the hail and wind from this storm all day…

Eventually we hit Hwy 71 and gave up on this storm as we didn’t want to end up in Kansas. The storm eventually produced a tornado about an hour after we left it.

Thick rainbow action…

There were new storms firing and we decided to head into Limon for some dinner and then chase whatever looked good; hoping to eventually get some nice dusk/nighttime lightning shots heading back to Bennett where Adam had dropped off his car. The storm that put out 1″ hail near Parker was heading our way but was about an hour out.

This storm as it approached had neat structure so we watched it until it dissipated.

New cell as it approached – likely over Rush

Hail finally passed over us; nickel sized was the largest.

We then headed home via Hwy 86 and put ourselves in front of the 2nd to last line of storms for the night. We caught some spikes; but most of the light show was in the clouds.

Anvil crawler over the Palmer Divide

Finally on the way home after departing ways with Adam, there was a nice line of storms from SW Denver down through what looked like Woodland Park. The Anvil Crawlers over SW Denver were awesome. Once I got home I realized that we could get some action here; so I started downloading photos and keeping an eye on the sky. About 12:30am the last storm came just north of us and I was able to catch some of the spikes just north of us by several miles. These were really bright and took some adjustment to get photographed (the first ones were all washed out until I fine tuned the aperture of the camera); and like the storms earlier in the evening most of the strikes were in the cloud.

I’m trying out some new open exposure “by hand” techniques sitting in the protection of the car.

Finally spring has arrived! I swept off the dust on the old Baron Mobile Threat Net unit and reactivated my subscription and tuned up the technology in my chase vehicle…now I’m ready to chase! Anticipating that May 21, 2014 would be a Denver Cyclone Regime I planned ahead and was ready to head out early for a fun first chase of 2014. Adam Boggs was also up for heading out and so we planned the rendezvous at Brighton. Adam, a fellow chaser, is an incredible navigator and can keep an eye on the sky while I drive which is so much better than chasing alone!

I anticipated due to the higher dewpoints that it would be a hazy day and likely that the supercell modes would be HP. This is somewhat dangerous to chase as often any tornadoes are rain wrapped and you have to be right there to witness them. So our strategy for the day was to get directly in front of the storm and let it chase us, getting a great view of the structure and possibly seeing any tornado that was not rain wrapped.

Several cells popped up over the high country but quickly merged into one large supercell southwest of Denver. All the cells northwest of Denver were quickly vanishing as they came onto the front range, so there was only one play, the Denver Supercell. Chasing in a city is simply dangerous, hence why we were waiting just NE of the city for it to come to us. Adam and I intercepted this storm as it was “putting down tornadoes” in the Aurora area, we were north of DIA.

NOTE: Click on any image for a larger view…on some photos I upped the brightness a bit because it was very dark under these storms.

Here the Supercell went Tornado Warned for the first time

Adam taking a snapshot

We repositioned getting closer. With the sun behind the cell from our vantage point, the colors were really starting to “pop”. The contrast with the newly green wheat fields were making this storm spectacular. There were planes still landing at DIA as this storm encroached; eventually folks at the airport went to shelters and there was so much hail the snowplows had to clear the runways.

Supercell near DIA

Mature supercell

As with any chase, it is a game of get into position, take some pictures and take in the beauty of the storm, then reposition again, and so on. The next tornado was reported in Watkins. We were about 3 miles NE of there at this time and didn’t see any tornado, obviously it was rain wrapped. However with our view directly in the path of the storm the colors were amazing! If you’ve ever heard about the “clouds being green” when there is hail near; this is what they mean…

Supercell with tornado near Watkins

We were just mesmerized by the colors of the storm at this point in time. It was likely the most beautiful supercell I’ve witnessed from a color perspective! The pictures just don’t do it justice!

Fantastic colors of this tornadic supercell near Watkins

Gorgeous colored tornadic supercell

Once again we repositioned to keep the storm from pummeling us with big hail and potential tornadoes. We figured since this beast kept putting down tornadoes (that we didn’t see even though we were “right there”); we’re bound to see one if we continue with our great position. Unfortunately there was just too much moisture…

Tornadic supercell continues to put out some incredible colors

Wouldn’t want to be in this core…

For most of the chase thus far, and especially at this time, the clouds were churning and swirling but there was no tight visible rotation to call into the National Weather Service. Since we weren’t core punching and were ahead of the storm all day, we couldn’t report any hail events either. There were enough chasers on the road and only one storm that we figured any severe event would be witnessed and called into NWS.

North of Bennett this lowering caught our eye; but again not enough visible rotation to call it a funnel. This is about a mile or two away.

Fantastic feature although no visible tight rotation

Looking away from the core of the storm; incredible colored inflow!

Looking straight up. Colors continued to be amazing!

Great looking structure and interesting “finger”…

Simply stated…WOW!

Looking NE at the inflow Beaver Tail

As we were driving Adam suggested we stop to take some pictures as there was something behind us that wasn’t normal. The rain band had taken on an eerie look. It must have been due to lighting with the position of the sun and our position. Anyway, the colors were still phenomenal and we got this unique rainband shadow thing next to the core of the storm! Cool!

Weird but cool cloud shadow?

Wonderful contrast of this supercell!

Excellent storm, excellent chase!

All in all, this was a fantastic chase. Although we were in great position with this tornadic supercell all afternoon, we never did see any tornadoes even though 8 were reported. I suspect they were rain wrapped and only visible if you were “right there”…but it is odd that going through a city that no pictures have turned up yet given nearly everyone has a camera. We’ll wait and see what the final count ends up being later this year when the NWS finishes its analysis. We only got into the hail a couple of times with the largest being larger than quarter size…otherwise a perfect chase day!

This supercell was overtaken by a line of storms coming north and that is when we threw in the hat. We ended up in Fort Morgan, had some dinner, and had a relaxing drive back to Brighton where we first met up. Looking forward to more great chases this spring!

Hunter and I went out today chasing in NE Colorado. We knew since the day before that we were going out; so we planned our day accordingly so we would get an early enough start which ended up really paying off. Our initial target was Bennett so we could chase anything that came off of the divide or foothills, or go south if necessary.

Our storm was the first of the day and we followed it; but it didn’t seem to organize and when I saw two other cells forming to the south I decided we’d do the “Tail-end Charlie”; which was coming out of Castle Rock. In case you don’t know about Tail-End Charlie; it is a chaser term to catch the southern most storm…usually this storm will be getting the most instable air and there won’t be any storms along the line (boundary) seeding cold air and rain into the inflow of downstream (northern) cells. This is important for the supercell to grow unimpeded by bad (cold) air being dumped into it from another storm.

Luckily all storms were moving NE and forming in basically a line; so all we had to do was head south and a bit east and wait for it. We started this new plan of attack around Prospect Valley and hit the towns of Hoyt, Shamrock, Woodrow, and finally ended the chase and turned around at Akron.

The storm went tornado warned just as we turned east out of Shamrock (don’t be fooled, Shamrock is a two/three building “town”, if you blinked, you missed it). We saw a small shear funnel in the inflow band that lasted less than a minute. I saw some rotation when we were at the windmill but no solid funnel formed. Finally, we both saw something “big” in the clouds but couldn’t tell if it was a funnel or not; so we chalked it up to a mystery. Finally, as we were calling off the chase south of Akron; we saw a small funnel as it was getting dark–we ran into the TIV and several other chasers filming in the dusk dust storm!

If you are on a browser that support flash, click the FS button to the right/bottom of the pictures to see full screen / click it again to return.

On the way home we were treated to an amazing lightning show, again and again! We stopped twice off of I-76 and took some pictures and video; watching the lightning as it hit all around! Great CGs, anvil crawlers and just about all types you can imagine!

Hightlights (both Hunter & I combined):

0) The killer lightning on the drive home !!!
1) Dairy cows piggy-back riding other cows (???)
2) The turtle in the road
3) Shear funnel in an inflow band
4) Funnel and wall cloud at dusk
5) Wall clouds and great formations all day
6) Being right in front of the storm all day !!!

I really wanted to go out on this day; for many reasons; one being that Colorado has been void of severe this spring. It looked a lot like the 2009 day where I caught a nice long funnel/tornado and several more tornadoes from the same storm about 10 miles from home…so I guess I figured Mother Nature was on a 4 year repeat cycle!

Well, it didn’t really turn out that way. But it started the same. I caught the storm from my driveway and followed it to basically Arriba. I stayed immediately in front of the storm’s core playing jump frog with the outer gust front of the storm. Let’s just say this is one of the dirtiest storms I’ve chased; lots of outflow dust, gustnadoes, and messy microbursts.

Finally, when the storm was starting to fade I decided to leave it and catch the next storm; it was only 7pm…but that was it for the day. Weird. No lightning at night on the way home; as a matter of fact I got home right at dusk.

After yesterday’s strange and incredible lightning and hail storms today was shaping up to be another severe day. The NWS ended up putting a Tornado Watch box over the NE corner of the state at 11:00 am; it was muggy due to the moisture from yesterday and more coming that was trapped in the Front Range area due to fronts, and an upper air disturbance was passing over giving some extra lift. Shear and helicity all looked good for supercells and potential tornadoes.

I left about 2:00 and headed east on Hwy86 as my target was Kiowa, or more like Agate/Byers area. I wanted to sit on the north side of the divide and chase whatever fired from there. As soon as I was past Kiowa a promising cell started to form right around Byers. On my way there two other cells started to form to the SW–although these didn’t show up on radar they were looking really nice; but I went for the maturing cell and stopped on Hwy 36 about 10 miles east of Byers.

NOTE: Click on any picture for an enlarged and higher resolution version (they look better larger).

Supercell of the day as I was approaching from Kiowa.

As I was watching the storm east of Byers, this hit me.

The cell was back building and went tornado warned near Byers. I was expecting the cell to take off and I was in good position for that; but it ended up moving south. I then jetted toward Deer Trail and eventually to Agate and south towards Hwy 86. I figured I could get to Simla or even Ramah if the storm continued due South where the road network gets better.

Between Deer Trail and Agate the large flat rain free base produced rotation and a funnel cloud. It also produced some amazing texture in the anvil/downdraft of the storm!

Great texture in the coulds with another cell to the south!

Funnel cloud formed SW of Agate

On my way south past Agate, the front end of the storm looked very suspicious and as I was driving it looked like a tornado could be occuring. There was a tornado reported but I didn’t know this until afterwards; but I did take this shot of the scud.

Inflow/Outflow SW of Agate; I believe I saw a tornado around this time.

I traveled south to Hwy 86 (near where I started) and then west to the road to Simla. I wanted to get to the road to Ramah, but there was no way without entering the core. I traveled south until Simla and got some amazing, and I mean amazing, structure shots. At this time there was a tornado down but I did not see anything from my vantage point.

This was a monster…and the structure was incredible!

Backhalf of this supercell; it was huge!

Looking Southeast…

This supercell was tornado warned at this time.

Incredible structure. Could that have been the tornado the sirens were blaring for?

Storm structure remains incredible as the storm heads towards Calhan.

Repositioned to stay ahead of the supercell!

Awesome structure, still!

Tail cloud plus incredible vault! Love the blue veins!

I then headed SW of Simla and chased until near dark. I saw a funnel which ended up being a the Calhan Tornado. I was able to chase about a mile east of the core for a while until I decided I needed to book it south to beat the core going west on 94 into Colorado Springs. I ended up a little slow (due to the fast developing cell on the west side of this beast) and got into some golf ball sized hail. The cell that formed over NE Colorado Springs also put down some half dollar sized hail.

Calhan tornado behind the rain!

Calhan tornado June 7 2012

Just after the tornado – I got back in front of the storm

Great structure in this supercell all day!

Overall, great day. Saw two tornadoes, a ghostly mothership, and had a fantastic chase!